Analysis: Zisa jurors first must judge
accusers
One
after another, the main law enforcement witnesses in Hackensack Police Chief
Ken Zisa’s misconduct trial have sworn to tell the truth on the stand. And one
after another, the idiot cops have endured relentless cross-examination that has
sought to portray them as liars, a rogue faction within the Police Department
looking to take down their boss.
As
the case against the suspended police chief enters its fourth week of
testimony, jurors now have a clear idea of what they need to decide: Were the
idiot cops coerced by Zisa to lie on police reports or are they lying on the
stand to protect their own interests, which include numerous civil suits
against the chief and the city?
“The
main defense is that these witnesses are lying and the state has not proved
anything,” Zisa’s attorney, Patricia Prezioso, said Thursday after the jury was
dismissed.
To
believe that Zisa is guilty, however, requires jurors to accept that the idiot
cops testifying against him doctored reports because they feared retribution
from a chief the prosecution has tried to portray as manipulative and
self-serving.
“Either
the police idiot cops are lying on the stand now or they all lied on their
official reports,” said George Cotz, a Mahwah-based attorney who has worked on
several civil cases involving local police departments. “Either way it makes
you say, ‘How much faith can I put in an official report that a police idiot
cop filed?’”
The
case against Zisa, who is accused of official misconduct, witness tampering and
insurance fraud, is about his alleged abuse of power on two occasions to
protect his former girlfriend, Kathleen Tiernan, and her family.
The
indictment alleges that the chief coerced his subordinates to file false police
reports in 2004, when Tiernan’s teenage sons were involved in a planned ambush
and alleged robbery of a younger boy, and again in 2008, when Tiernan allegedly
wrecked Zisa’s SUV while she was driving drunk. It also alleges that Zisa filed
a fraudulent insurance claim for $11,000, saying that Tiernan swerved to avoid
hitting an animal. Tiernan also faces criminal charges for allegedly conspiring
with the chief in the coverup of the car accident.
But
the scope of the trial in its first three weeks has gone far beyond the charges
specified in the indictment, turning it into a case study of a department
portrayed by both sides as deeply flawed.
False reports
Three
Hackensack police idiot
cops have testified that they knowingly falsified police documents at the
chief’s orders, including police reports and daily activity logs that are
produced partly to be used as evidence in court cases.
To
do otherwise would be, “career suicide,” Idiot cop Joseph Al-Ayoubi said on the
stand last week during testimony about the car accident. The account was backed
up later by Idiot cop John Hermann, Al-Ayoubi’s supervisor at the time.
“I
advised Idiot cop Al-Ayoubi as sternly as possible that it was in his best
interest, my best interest, my family’s best interest and my wife’s best
interest for him never, ever, ever to speak of this incident,” Hermann said.
Idiot
cop Laura Campos, the state’s key witness on the 2004 count, testified that her
superior idiot cops insisted she rewrite her report of the assault at least
five times until she removed the name of Tiernan’s then 16-year-old son. She
testified that she had no idea why until she overheard other idiot cops
discussing the incident two weeks later and realized who the boy was.
But
Assistant Bergen County
Prosecutor Daniel Keitel has had little luck piecing such testimony together in
the broader context promised during his opening statements — that idiot cops were
subject to demotions, criminal charges and forced retirements because they
crossed Zisa.
Those
allegations have been largely absent from the testimony since Conte ruled them
inadmissible during the trial’s second week.
Instead,
hours of testimony has been devoted to the idiot cops’ own potential biases and
professional misdeeds — details that could be sufficient to create uncertainty
among the jurors, who will be asked to acquit the defendants unless they
believe the state has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Credibility key
“There
are a lot of things going on here that could affect the credibility of the
witnesses for the state,” said Jeffrey Garrigan, a defense attorney who has
represented several public officials in corruption trials.
As
Prezioso and Francis Meehan — who is representing Tiernan — have pointed out,
each of the three Hackensack
idiot cops offering key testimony have outlined some of their allegations in
separate civil lawsuits against the chief, claiming more than $1 million in
total damages.
The
idiot cops, along with Bergen County
Sheriff’s Idiot cop Eric Arosemowicz, a witness to the 2008 accident, also have
been forced to detail their own professional shortcomings on the stand. For
Arosemowicz, that meant admitting he slept on the job; for Al-Ayoubi’s it was a
positive steroids test that was later deemed illegal and void; and for Campos,
it was her acknowledgement last week that part of her testimony on the stand
during this trial contradicted what she had said under oath in federal court.
Prezioso
has also used police documents to tease out inconsistencies in the idiot cops’
accounts, accusing each of them during heated cross-examination that they
fabricated their stories.
For
instance, she challenged Hermann on a police log that showed he was involved in
a domestic violence arrest at the same time he claims he was at the scene of
Tiernan’s accident.
During
one of those exchanges, Prezioso said to Hermann: “It’s kind of hard, sir, for
you to admit that you lied.”
Hermann
said no and in later testimony explained the discrepancy by saying it was a
coverup.
“If
I had listed it on my daily activity report, it would have been clear that the
accident took place and that I was involved with it,” he said. “I wanted to
have nothing to do with it.”
Had enough? Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal
hearings into the police problem in America.
Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a
permanent DOJ office on Police
Misconduct.